Be alert: there’s something new to be watched
There’s a strange phenomenon which has our esteemed MSM in its grip: reporting on events which will take place in the future, i.e. reporting on what politicians and other important figures will say in a speech to be held in a day or two. Why is that – and why do these prominent figures release their speeches days in advance? I have my suspicions … see below.
So, unsurprisingly, the MSM report on another Labour ‘Plan’ which they aim to include in their not-yet-written manifesto. It’s a ‘housing plan’, according to the guardian as documented in our favourite ‘news’ compilation (link). The Times, copying from the FT, reports that “Labour wants to force landowners to sell plots at below market value to boost housebuilding” (link, paywalled). It’s only a ‘plan’, so hold yer horses. However, I found this snippet in yon article (my emphasis):
“[…] if Labour won the election, “hope” value would be scrapped. Analysis by the Centre for Progressive Policy think tank found that land worth £22,520 per hectare as agricultural land could be worth £6.2 million per hectare with permission: 275 times more.” (link, paywalled)
This ‘hope value’ refers to the hope that a planning permission would be granted. However – just look at the land value! Even half of that ‘hope value’ should be sufficient to allow farmers to sell out and stop producing food, thus saving the planet and contributing to Net Zero. After all, what could be better to farm ‘wind’, ‘solar’ and ‘housing’ than mere food. Who needs food security when we can import all we need, correct?
The cost and availability of food isn’t something the Westminster class needs to worry about, or rather: the MSM don’t mention it, just as Starmer’s fabulous Net Zero ‘energy’ plan has sunk below their horizon. They don’t even mention the reaction by one of Labour’s Big Trade Union Donors to rethink this plan and not strangle the industry, not least because of ‘national security’ implications (link). Actually, “we” won’t need to worry about energy ‘security’ that anyway because the CEO of National Grid told the DT that
“British households will be asked to voluntarily cut their electricity usage again as Europe faces up to another winter without Russian gas supplies. […] It comes as National Grid is preparing to publish its winter outlook report next month, which will set out how prepared Britain’s electricity system is for next winter.” (paywalled link)
‘Tis another ‘plan’ to be presented sometime next month … In case you wonder why we have to plan for electricity shortages should we get a harsh winter ‘without Russian gas’, it’s because our power plants run on gas to produce electricity, and sadly we still don’t have “long-term gas storage facilities, [relying] on piping gas from Europe in the winter, particularly when demand is high.” (paywalled link)
So what the fluffing fluff have government and energy companies been doing since last year? Will we need to pay even more for our energy bills? And where is the input of all those fabulous wind~ and solar farms? Aren’t they supposed to replace all those dirty coal and gas power stations?
There’s another news snippet indicating that summer is just around the corner, the Silly Season now being upon us. According to the DT, grocery supermarkets have now taken to put ‘dummy jars’ of coffee on their shelves, with M & S only displaying one pack of steaks on their shelves. No – there’s no food shortage. This is to stymy shoplifters which have taken to stealing food even in shops outside London (paywalled link)
The ‘excuse’ for this behaviour? The ‘cost-of-living crisis’! One would have thought that some intrepid investigative reporter might have tried to find out who those thieves are. It’s hard to believe that they’re Audi Avenue dwellers. Being a raycissst, I of course suspect that certain guests which have been spread around the country might have sticky fingers … but we won’t know, nor would we be told.
Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be any Labour ‘programme’ about either inflation or this outbreak of shoplifting. One would have thought that the Trade Unions, if not the Labour Party leaders, would have made some noise about this. Perhaps there’s no mileage in it – ‘mileage’ in the sense of concocting ‘a plan’ which someone might present to the public in a week or so but is willing to let us know beforehand.
The reason for this ploy is obvious to me: ‘creating’ a headline and thus public interest in order to elicit comments or outcries before the event. These can then be picked up and addressed in the forthcoming speech or paper. It’s as if the reading and commenting public has become a cheap ‘focus group’ for politicians, adjusting their plans in order to win votes. Addressing the reality people have to face – that is not on the agenda.
I leave you with a sweet little piece of news, from the USA. No, not about the state of California where more and more shops and big chain stores are closing because of unmitigated theft. It’s from New York where a lawyer used a ChatBot to do legal research for a case. Alas, he had to apologise to the judge because yon ChatBot had made up all the presented case laws and even lied to the lawyer (link, paywalled).
How do we know those lovely speeches, these ‘manifesto plans’, reported well beforehand in the MSM, haven’t been made up by ChatBots? Moreover, how do we know if the public comments and outcries elicited by these planned speeches and presentations aren’t created by ChatBots, to govern our, the plebs, attitudes? After all, if ChatBots say so, who are we to disagree, if even a lawyer trusted his ChatBot?
That’s all I have for today. Let me reassure you: I’m not a ChatBot. Have a good day.
”British households will be asked to voluntarily cut their electricity usage again as Europe faces up to . . .”
. . . Several millions of electric cars sucking down leccy from the already creaking national grids . . .
Viv, apologies again for off topic post. It does however fit with your exposés of the media.
MSM reports have been broadcast and printed to say:
– 1 Pinocchio – Russia attacked / blew up its own four Nord Stream gas pipelines
– 2 Pinocchios – Russia fired upon a Nuclear Power Station after its own troops had captured it and were protecting it
– 3 Pinocchios – Putin’s troops attacked Russian villages to the North of Ukraine and across the Ukrainian border
– Pants on fire – Lo and behold, Russia attacked Moscow with Ukrainian drones
Yes they have all been reported on msm. Pants on fire, just this evening – Al Jezera and now on Sky can you believe – ”nothing yet to believe that Kiev had anything to do with it” and ”Russia could have launched the attack on itself”).
‘Do you believe all that?’. (Really!). We are quickly getting to the point where events – World War Three, shall make the msm redundant.
Welcome back, Viv and Debbie. Nothing much seems to have changed on here. Still only the top half a line to type into. Probably my antiquated system.
Mostly it seems this country has gone completely mad. Though the rest of the world is not far behind is it.
Solved for me when I used a different browser.
Theft was decriminalised in California for anything below $950. In London it is £200. About ten years ago I read an account by a security manager at Harrods Food Hall saying that if he ever stopped a thief who was genuinely hungry he would take them out for a meal. He hadn’t ever caught such a person stealing. Often, they were well to do Knightsbridge residents. The less well to do in M&S and Waitrose may balk at the price of a fillet steak but there are cheaper meats available. Instead of a £15 wagyu fillet steak you can have a nice piece of fish for £6 or ‘gourmet burgers’ for even less. It isn’t the cost of living that necessitates hiding steak.
The conservatives are interfering in the rental sector – Gove’s Renters Reform Bill – and Labour intend to meddle in the land and house building sector. Both are sticking plaster fixes to the imbalance between demand and supply caused by unrestrained population growth through immigration which has driven up rents in the past year by an average of 8%. Behind both is the Treasury protecting asset values to protect banks’ balance sheets. The mismatch between population and housing stock gets worse every year. People on median incomes need to save until they are 46 just to have a deposit for a mortgage that will be somewhere between 5 and 7 times a couple’s joint income. (In my day it was typically 3 times joint income). One could fill a bookcase with reports from ministers and think tanks over the past 20 years or so on the housing ‘crisis’. The mismanagement by successive governments is quite extraordinary. Even if immigration were reduced to zero the arrears of infrastructure investment are colossal. How much and how long to undo the damage of Beeching’s Axe on the rail network? To increase sewage and water infrastructure? Decades and billions. New houses and the people therein need supporting infrastructure of roads and rail connectivity and nearby jobs plus school places and hospitals. And whatever transport is available it will be inadequate so they will – erm – need cars.
So no solution in the offing, just several more years of blather and short term headlines proclaiming some ineffective fix. The UK is not going to deport a few million and the only real solution is to build new towns in the green belts around existing conurbations which will not happen for some time – even Guardian and BBC types will resist – until a socialist government feels secure enough to show its true colours and turns the UK into a Soviet style economy. Or perhaps the UK will become a caliphate first.
David Goodhart’s ‘Somewheres and Anywheres’ and Matthew Goodwin’s recent book about the ‘new elites’ are two perspectives on the same problem. Despite Goodhart’s book being a best seller, with Goodwin’s on its way, absolutely nothing changes. The gulf between our governing blob and the rest of us, no matter him much it is highlighted and brought into stark awareness, has not reduced at all. The media – led by the BBC – seek to keep it that way and they are succeeding – so far.
I quoted Samuel Beckett yesterday – “Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou, il ne reste plus qu’à chanter.” – but omitted a fun fact about singing; the Chinese Choral Association has ten million members. But don’t get too excited for when China takes us over. They sing Chinese folk songs not Bach, Handel or Haydn.
Lest I get a reputation for doom and gloom, let me recommend something uplifting: Beckett’s play “Happy days”. I last saw it a decade ago at the National with Fiona Shaw. In a nuclear wasteland, buried up to her neck in the final act, as the character adapts to ever declining circumstances, the play ends with the line ‘Happy days – so far”. It is a testimony to the human spirit and we should not give up on ourselves. If you ever get a chance to see it then do. I came out high and while the feeling it left me with flags occasionally it is still the best antidote to despair that I know.
As a Devon country yokel I was most surprised when having a break in the Cotswolds, The number of black, yellow and brown speaking in foreign tongue was so great I thought I had been transported without my knowledge.
Our little country is destroyed, I cannot wait to retire to my plot.
I’m a wayscist!
The Cotswolds? Try even more enriched Bolton or Blackburn.
Here in rural ‘middle England’ which was once full of arable farms dairy and beef in particular most have already stopped farming except for rape and linseed and a few sheep. The way now is to sell your acres sometimes in a job lot but also a field at a time. These have be now built on , the usual Audi Avenue style ‘homes’ with the same sort of density that would have made victorian deveopers blush . One landowner made it common knowledge that they would nevr sell to developers, but £15 million changed their minds the land is now a housing estate ( sorry collection of delightful country homes) housing people escaping from urban areas with political leanings to match. End result, traffic congestion, increase in nuisance crime, lengthy wait for a doctors appointment, local schools full and all the rest that high density urban areas ‘enjoy’ .
We also enjoy the benefits of large scale solar farms ( two as you ask ) which have destroyed other prime agricultiral land, but I suppose to be fair, wild life has disappeared as have most of the birds which apparently suits our new ex-urban residents as these are thought to be messy and are not liked along with muddy lanes in winter which spoil the Rangy and now to cap it all there is a petition to create additional street lighting on their new developments because it seems they are afraid to go out in the dark.
I think you need to worry more about government plans for a digital currency. When cash disappears, they’ll have you by the short and curlies.
Agreed Harry. We should also worry about the proposed “15 minute cities”, better known as “concentration camps”. Sadly far too many are either brainwashed / not interested or dismiss speaking out against government plans as “conspiracy theory”.